Psychological aspects of the Aum Shinrikyo affair

Abstract

IntroductionJapan is known as one of the safest countries in the world, but terrorism has become so global, that nowadays any country can suffer from terrorist attacks. The most famous (and to be accurate, one of the very few) acts of terrorism to have occurred in Japan was the sarin attack of 1995, perpetrated by Aum Shinrikyo. Terrorism in every region has its own typical features, as does Japanese terrorism. By analyzing the psychological aspect of the Aum Shinrikyo affair, we can learn more about the goals and motivation of terrorists in general.Aum Shinrikyo is a Japanese religious organization, better known for its terrorist activity, mainly the for sarin attack in the Tokyo subway on March 1995. This act of terrorism came as a surprise to the whole world (for the first time in human history weapons of mass destruction were used by non-combatants, and it happened in Japan, which is known as one of the safest countries), but it was a much greater shock for Japan itself. Japanese society always had confidence in a perfectly organized social system, with no possibility of violence. The sarin attack showed that this was an illusion: Japanese people for a long time could not feel safe in their own country. It is what can be called an effective terrorist attack: 12 people killed, but with a great psychological impact on the whole country.The most surprising fact for the Japanese people, after news of Aum had spread all over the country, was that most of the terrorists were graduates of famous universities: Tokyo, Waseda, Kyoto, etc. They were not uneducated misfits (from whom violence is more often expected), but qualified specialists, with good educations and with ambitions. This fact meant, in general terms, that in spite of career and other material opportunities provided by Japanese society, young people could choose anti-social forms of behavior. Moreover, they were not only anti-social, but they acted violently against their own country. Psychologists, sociologists, historians and journalists from Japan (and several specialists in other countries) tried to explore the Aum Shinrikyo phenomenon and came to the conclusion that Aum was a result of many factors, leading from religion to tragedy.Terrorist motivation was always a great field for discussion between scientists; psychologists try to find the proper method to analyze the problem (Zinchenko, 2007, 2011). Terrorism in Japan is, of course, a special case (Raevskiy, 2012), but in this study we tend to use the achievements of the Soviet psychological school.According to the Cultural-historic approach, introduced to psychology by L.S. Vygotskiy, every event should be analyzed not as a certain independent case, but in connection with the specific cultural features of the region and the time it took place. If we take a look at the situation in Japan in 1980s, when Aum Shinrikyo appeared, we can see that the social-cultural background can be definitely seen as one of the main factors of the Aum phenomenon.First of all, we should not underestimate the role of Japan's defeat in World War II and the occupation of Japan by American soldiers. It was preceded by Emperor Hirohito's speech on the radio: for the first time in Japanese history, the emperor admitted that he was not a God (kamisama), but an ordinary man. Some historians argue that this had a greater psychological impact on people than the defeat itself (Mesheryakov, 2009). In any case, Japan had to build a new country under the supervision of the USA, and for post-war generations, work for the sake of their country was of the greatest value.The next generation, born in the 1960s, was much less idealistic in its aims: money for them was not an ultimate goal, but merely a way to provide a living; young people were seeking spiritual enlightenment more than economical welfare. Some Japanese sociologists invented a new term for the post-war generation: they call them shinjinrui, meaning New Generation (Tanaka). …